https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0796-9618
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ABSTRACT
Scour is a significant cause of bridge failure, and resulting bridge closures are likely to generate significant disruption to infrastructure networks. The management of scour-susceptible bridges is a significant challenge for improving transport resilience, but tends to be heuristic and qualitative. Such assessments often suffer from insufficient knowledge of key factors and require assumptions, which may increase their estimation and relative uncertainty. Analysis of publicly available technical documents reveals that various definitions of “risk” are adopted, as well as multiple approaches are applied. This paper has three objectives: (i) to illustrate the concept of risk in bridge scour management; (ii) to propose a simple scoring system to analyse existing risk-based approaches to manage bridge scour; and (iii) to analyse and compare such approaches on the basis of the obtained scores. A sample of nine documents containing bridge scour risk assessment practices or approaches was analysed using the developed rating system.
Acknowledgments
Maria Pregnolato was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) LWEC (Living With Environmental Change) Fellowship (EP/R00742X/2). Luke J. Prendergast acknowledges the Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, for travel funding to facilitate this collaboration. This study was partially funded by the Italian Civil Protection Department within the project Accordo CSLLPP e ReLUIS 2021-2022 “WP3: Analisi, revisione e aggiornamento delle Linee Guida”.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Data availability statement
No data, models, or code were generated or used during the study.
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Notes on contributors
M. Pregnolato
Dr Maria Pregnolato is a Senior Lecturer in Infrastructure Resilience in Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol (UK). Her work focuses on infrastructure resilience and risk management from natural hazards, in particular the impact of flooding to road networks and bridges. She held an EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) Fellowship to investigate the impact of extreme flooding to bridges, including hydrodynamic modelling and scour risk management. In recent years, she has been focusing on structural health monitoring and Digital Twins, exploring the role of sensing and digitalisation within infrastructural assets exposed to flooding and natural hazards.
Pier Francesco Giordano
Dr. Pier Francesco Giordano is Assistant Professor (RTDa) at the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering (DABC) of Politecnico di Milano, Italy, where he received his PhD cum laude, in 2021. His current research activities include the topics of bridge management, Value of Information from Bayesian decision theory, and Structural Health Monitoring. He graduated cum laude with the international Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering from University of Bologna, Italy, in 2016. Also, he graduated with the Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions (SAHC) from both University of Minho, Portugal, and Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain, in 2017.
L.J. Prendergast
Dr Luke J. Prendergast is Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering at University of Nottingham, UK. Prior to this, Luke worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Luke obtained his PhD at University College Dublin, Ireland (2015) and holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) from University College Cork, Ireland (2011). Luke works as an Assistant Editor at the (Elsevier) Journal of Sound and Vibration (JSV), with focus on research related to damage identification in civil engineering structures. His current research interests include Structural Health Monitoring, Vibration-Based Bridge Scour Monitoring, Vehicle-Bridge Interaction, and Offshore Wind Foundation Engineering.
P.J. Vardanega
Dr Paul J. Vardanega is an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol. He has continuing research interests in fundamental soil behaviour, development of geotechnical databases, structural health monitoring, pavement engineering and bridge scour. He is a Graduate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a Member of the Institution of Engineers Australia and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is one of the co-authors of the 2016 book 'Bridge Monitoring: A practical guide' published by ICE Publishing.
Maria Pina Limongelli
Prof. Maria Pina Limongelli received her PhD in Seismic Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. She is currently Associate Professor of Structural and Seismic Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests in the field of Structural Health Monitoring of civil structures include vibration-based damage identification, value of Information of SHM, and SHM Standardization. She is an active member with leading roles in several committees and associations in the field of SHM and structural engineering (among others ISHMII, fib, IABSE, and JCSS). She serves on the editorial board of several international peer-reviewed journals including the Engineering Structures, ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering, Journal of Civil SHM, Infrastructures, and Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructures. She participates in leading roles in several national and international funded projects on Seismic and Structural Health Monitoring and performance assessment of bridges.